I would have to say that Spider-Man is not only the best adaptation of a comic book film that I have ever seen, but is among the greatest, big-budget, SFX summer popcorn movies ever made (gee could it be that the key to sucess is not so much a marketig blitz, but good casting, a good director, a good screenwriter, etc., etc.,), a brilliant example of pop art, an almost avante-garde like fixation on the joys of pure movement, and, as of right now, the Best film of 2002. For a relatively short movie, it packed so much in, but it did so with a sure sense of economy, clarity, pacing, and wit (the use of montage and digital superimposition to illustrate the creation of the Spider-Man costume, the montage sequence of Spider-Man fighting crime and the New Yorkers giving testimony to their feeling toward the city's newest crime-fighter), that for me, the film had the depth and texture of a film twice as long (plus, I felt as time itself was suspended, as I swooped along the concrete canyons of Manhattan, defying gravity, I felt like I wanted to holler in exuberance, just as Peter Parker does; or even in another movement, as the film deftly navigated the relationship between Mary Jane and Peter/Spider-Man). It all seemed so seemlessly integrated, action scenes, which demonstrated how CGI could be put the work successfully (to compare it with the scenes I complained about in Blade II, the CGI was no less obvious, though most of the time I was too caught up to care about it, but the way the camera swooped and spun around, even if those camera movements where themselves digital creations, they swept the audience along in the sheer impossibility of it all; it was like an animated film that was not cartoonish; compared to Spider-Man, the camera in Blade II might as well have been bolted to the ground), blending, refracting, difusing into quiet, scenes featuring some great acting (it helps that I'm a huge fan of Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst, and Wilhem Dafoe) that are both emotionally, and at times, morally complex. Whoah, I'm running out of superlatives here, but I should note how funny the film is; and not in an ironic, post-modern, wink, wink, hipper than thou to the material attitude. This is not cynical humor, though it can be knowing, but grows out of the characters and the situations (I loved JK Simmons as JJ Jameson, especially his lines about how he loves his barber, and how he objects to Peter's usage of the word "slander," it's libel). In short, I loved this movie, and I plan on seeing it again, probably this week. Will probably post more later.